What were you expecting?

Moving happened!

We have moved! We live in this house now. And while we are both occasionally overtaken by fits of holy-shit-what-have-we-done with regard to this stupid-big purchase and the baby coming and the changes all of this will mean to my job (and salary), it’s all under control and we’re very happy about it (after the fits pass). And we have moments like last night when we went to our local grocery store and they played a Frank Turner song we love, or like today at lunch when we walked to the library (it took us four minutes) and found that our Providence library cards work in every library in the state because of course every library in the state is on the same system. Also, our library has at least four of this year’s six Hugo nominees for best novel actually on the shelf, in the science fiction section (which I didn’t expect to find at all in a tiny town library), meaning they are keeping their collection pretty well up to date. Yay for me! And I picked up the new Cat Valente novel from the new releases shelf because I can’t go to the library and not check something out. Anyway, those moments reinforce that we picked the right place (“It’s a sign.” “You don’t believe in signs.”).

We’re very slowly unpacking (the kitchen is finally a working kitchen again as of last night, although I guess Sunday night to Tuesday night isn’t so bad). We’ve hired a guy to paint four rooms, and we’re working on scheduling that work, and we’re getting quotes to have someone come out and do some initial yard clean-up (including poison ivy, which we seem to have a lot of). About three quarters of the outside of the house (first floor) is under attack by bushes and plants and vines of all kinds, and we want some help beating them back. The poison ivy is all farther from the house, but I want to start killing and removing it as soon as possible. One place I called says they don’t like to handle poison ivy removal because that can cause their guys to miss work, and I was like, I KNOW, OF COURSE IT’S DIFFICULT, WHY DO YOU THINK I’M WILLING TO PAY YOU TO DO IT. So we’re probably not going with that guy. We have a stone wall bordering most of the property that we can barely see through all the overgrown plants, but that’s next year’s problem. (We have a stone wall! Of all the things we wanted in a forever home, a stone wall was one we never thought we’d actually get.)

Want to know something REALLY weird? There’s a CRIB upstairs. Like, for a BABY to sleep in. Because we’re going to have a BABY soon. This kid is going to be 15 years old, and I’m still going to be surprised to see them come in to the kitchen. I’m adjusting. Slowly.

(The crib and dresser both got delivered yesterday – BIG thank you to both sets of parents for those and their accessories. They look FANTASTIC, and they’ll look even better when they’re actually in the baby’s room after it gets painted.)